Astudy On Baudrillard’s Theory Of Consumer Society

This paper based on the Baudrillard’s “consumer society”, and studied the Baudrillard’stheory of consumer society. Firstly, this paper put forward the forming background ofBaudrillard’s theory of consumer society from the aspects of society and theory respectively.It points out that the theory is under the background of world war two, and capitalism israpidly developed, the society transform from the productive society to the consumer society.The theory mainly comes from the production and consumption theory of Max, the semioticsof Roland Barthes and Lefebvre’s daily critique theory of modern world. Then, this paper putforward the main content and characteristics of Baudrillard’s consumer society, including themeaning of consume and consumer society, the formation of consumption symbols and theirindividual differences, the impact of the mass media in a consumer society, consumptionsymbols penetrating into the social and cultural areas. The characteristics of the consumersociety mainly include material abundance, symbol consumption inequality, the spread ofadvertising media and the alienation of consumption symbol. At the same time, this paperexpounds the criticism of Baudrillard’s consumer society theory from the loss of subjectivityand culture. In a consumer society, this paper points out that the symbol controls the people’sdaily life, consumer society destroys the ecological environment. In the consumer society,people lost their own subjectivity, the consumerism and hedonism culture appeared, the massmedia also infiltrated symbol system, art and aesthetic culture changed. Finally, based on theabove content, this paper puts forward two revelations for contemporary China. First, in ourcountry socialist economy construction level, we should strengthen the construction ofsocialist spiritual civilization, set up overall and rational consumption concept, pay attentionto the production function, and promote the development of industry and the real economy.Second, in the consumer level, consumers should use value as consumption scale, developand set up the correct consumption concept.